Get the Flock Out of Kalamazoo, a SWMI DSA led campaign, has obtained, through a Michigan Freedom of Information Act request, the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety’s (KDPS) Flock Safety camera search-audit log: 140,561 individual search records covering January 1 through July 1, 2026.
What the data we received shows:
- Scale: Kalamazoo’s camera network was queried an average of 772 times a day in the data we received (roughly once every two minutes, around the clock) with volume rising, not falling, over the six months covered.
- Most searches aren’t KDPS’s own. Only about 35% of daily searches (roughly 273/day) were run by KDPS itself. The remaining 65% (roughly 503/day) came from nine outside law-enforcement agencies with access to Kalamazoo’s network, led by the Michigan State Police, which alone accounted for more search volume than KDPS.
- Most searches have no documented reason to exist. In the data we received, 63% of all searches (88,542 of them) carry no case number, meaning no link to any reviewable investigation. KDPS’s own rate is worse than nearly every other agency on the same system: 90.3% of its searches have no case number, compared to 0% for Portage PD and 0.1% for the Michigan Department of Corrections, agencies operating on the identical platform.
- Drug enforcement, not stolen vehicles, is the top use. Nearly 1 in 4 searches (24.9%) were logged for drug-related reasons, more than any other category, including the vehicle-theft and violent-crime cases most associated with this technology’s marketing.
- A single search reaches far beyond Kalamazoo. The median individual search queried 1,165 separate camera networks nationwide; the largest reached 6,398.
“This data confirms what residents have suspected for months: this is a large, active surveillance system, not the narrow investigative tool it’s been sold as,” said Euan Simpson a representative from the Get the Flock Out of Kzoo campaign. “The public paid for this system and has a right to know how it’s being used. We shouldn’t have had to file a records request to get basic answers about who is searching our cameras and why.”
Get the Flock Out of Kalamazoo is releasing the full dataset publicly so that residents, journalists, and elected officials can review the findings themselves. It can be accessed here.
The findings will be presented to the Kalamazoo City Commission, Kalamazoo County Commission, Kalamazoo Township Board of Trustees, and Portage City Council during the National Week of Action Against ALPRS.
Community members are invited to join Get the Flock Out of Kzoo at a rally on Monday, August 17, at Kalamazoo City Hall, kicking off the National Week of Action Against ALPRs. Residents will gather to call on local officials to end KDPS’s use of Flock Safety cameras and share these findings directly with the public.
Southwest Michigan DSA 